waiting for hassana

Featured in the 2017 Sundance Short Film Category, Waiting for Hassana documents the terrifying true story of how nearly 300 young women were abducted from their school in Nigeria and herded to a forest camp of the terrorist group Boko Haram. The only evidence of their abduction is a grainy photograph, and the haunting stories of the few who escaped.

On a Monday night in April, in the province of Chibok, Nigeria, two hundred and seventy-six girls were taken from their school. They were gathered, threatened, and then herded onto trucks. These trucks rumbled through the wooded brush of Chibok; then far away from that place, cutting a tremulous, twelve-hour path towards an unknown destination. If the girls smelled of smoke, it was because their school had also been burned down that night. If there hung the scent of discharged ammunition, it was because the whole night had been attended to by rifle fire. And those that burned their school, those that shot the rifles, those that, crying Allah Akbar, kidnapped them -- they now addressed the weeping girls, their prisoners: “Now you will know who we are,” they said. “We will take you to our place.”

That “place” would turn out be one of the forest camps of the jihadist group, Boko Haram. Two years later, the only hard evidence of these girls’ fate remains a grainy photograph and video: both depict them sitting, expressionless, clad in gray Islamic dress. In a matter of hours, nearly three hundred teenaged girls had been violently abducted by terrorists. In a matter of weeks, students destined for achievement had been sold as slaves.

Fifty-three of the captured girls managed to escape. Two years later, the remaining two hundred and seventy- five have not been saved.

iAm21 produced the short film WAITING FOR HASSANA, and are in talks to produce the feature film documenting the horrific abductions and 'Bring Back Our Girls' campaign.

STATUS - (Short) Debuted, (Feature) In Development

BUDGET - $3 mil

MODEL - Docu/Drama

ASSETS - ?

CREATIVE OVERVIEW - ?

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY - Indie, Festivals

FINANCIALS - Seeking equity in first position 20% premium into a 50/50 split